This invention relates to the production of articles in diced form, and more particularly to method and apparatus for dicing cooked chicken and other food products.
Food products, such as cooked chicken, turkey, beef, vegetables and others, are useful in diced form for incorporation into soup and stew stocks, salads and other dishes. In the commercial production of such food products heretofore, they have been subjected to the action of rotating cutter blades arranged to reduce the food product to diced form. Such rotating blades have not been completely satisfactory, however, for several reasons: They produce excessive amounts of fines, torn and partial pieces of random sizes and shapes, all of which degrade the quality of the product. Such mechanical cutter blades also allow cross-contamination of product by re-using the blades to cut a plurality of succeeding products delivered to the cutter mechanism. The blades require frequent sharpening and often become broken, contributing to excessive loss of production time and correspondingly increased cost of production.